Sea Maps: For a History of Globalization from the Perspective of Water

Maps, especially sea and ocean maps, have so far played a marginal role in the history of globalisation, although they illustrate maritime spaces and the associated global connections like almost no other medium. For this reason, sea and ocean charts will be used to tell a hitherto little-known story of the period of upheaval from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century, which can open up a new perspective on the genesis of today's global world. Two important collections form the material basis of the project: on the one hand, the Gotha Perthes Collection, which is preserved in the Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt and is one of two map publishing archives still preserved in Europe. The second is the map and navigation collection of the German Maritime Museum - Leibniz Institute of Maritime History in Bremerhaven.

The transdisciplinary research network aims to analyse and research the sea and marine chart collections and make the results accessible to a wider public. Professor Dr Iris Schröder (University of Erfurt/Gotha Research Centre), Professor Dr Ruth Schilling (University of Bremen) and Professor Dr Wolfgang Struck (University of Erfurt) are not only working together in the network in the fields of history and Literary Studies. Dr Petra Weigel (Gotha Research Library/Perthes Collection) and Professor Dr Sunhild Kleingärtner (German Maritime Museum - Leibniz Institute of Maritime History, Bremerhaven) are also involved in the project, which aims to shed new light on the materiality of maps and make them tangible. The aim is to show how maps work as objects and how they continue to shape our view of the oceans today. The project thus sees itself as a contribution to historically mediated research into the relationship between humans and the sea.

Impressions from the project are available in the digital exhibition.

_{Image: August Petermann, Der grosse Ocean, Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt, [3] (1857), plate 1 © Gotha Research Library, SPA 4°000100.}